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EU Commission president and Council president speak at joint press conference. Jonathan Raa/Demotix. All rights reserved.The
Eurozone crisis,
a complex issue with vast economic, political and social implications for all
countries involved, has arguably been the most significant challenge
the EU has faced since its inception.

As the European press reports on the refugee crisis unfolding across the continent, important media lessons can be drawn from another recent event: the Eurozone crisis. We spoke with a selection of journalists from mainstream European media and also the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University.

Naturally,
European media has been reporting extensively on the crisis and its effects.
Whether or not all its elaborate aspects have been given fair exposure in the
press and TV is open to question. More importantly, however, is whether the
media in different EU countries has been giving sufficient focus to all of these
different aspects?

From
country to country

A
new study
by the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at Oxford University
revealed that press coverage of the crisis has varied considerably from country
to country.

“One
of the evident characteristics of coverage across Europe is that it has been
viewed through distinctly national lenses, portraying the Euro crisis within
the lens of what it means within each country, and rarely considering it from a
European perspective”, explains the project’s director Professor Robert G.
Picard.

I spoke
with a selection of journalists from mainstream media in Berlin, Brussels, Rome
and London, to investigate further. Paul Mason, Economics
Editor of Channel 4 News, confirms the same trend for TV coverage: “The problem we've got as broadcasters is
that our remit is to our audience. The people who commission our daily reports
are constantly asking: what does it mean to a mum feeding her kids at 7pm in
northern England - and rightly so”.

Jan Dams, Deputy Economics
Editor of the German broadsheet Die Welt agrees: “As journalists, we serve expectations. We live in a media world where
you can measure every single reader on your website”.

Moreover, a
lot of the sources for EU correspondents come from within their own government
representation offices in Brussels, and, as such, this domestic angle is often
evident in their stories. “That is why
there is such a big difference between the reporting of the same story in
national newspapers", says Méabh McMahon, Brussels
Correspondent for France 24 TV network.

On top of
that, the EU is split into different groups; the Northern group, which includes
countries like Germany, the Netherlands and Finland, who insist on
belt-tightening reforms; the Eastern countries, who have spent years reforming
to bring their economies in line with the Eurozone criteria and finally the
former bailout countries who are keeping a very close eye on negotiations, making
sure that Greece does not get a sweeter deal than they were offered.

Rome-based
reporter for German newswire Deutsche
Presse Agentur Alvise Armellini brings up an example of the different journalistic
perspectives that McMahon talks about: “My
colleagues find it very hard to picture
the idea that Germany is profiting
from the crisis - which is something that is widely reported in Italy” he
says.

Jan Dams confirms this. He
doesn’t think that this topic has been sufficiently covered in Germany. He
adds: “I've been to Athens three times
since January and I was shocked to see the completely different perception of
Germany there”.

In some
extreme cases news reporting has been based on false claims. Mehran Khalili, a
British-Iranian political communications consultant and co-founder of the
grassroots campaigning Omikron Project, points to a 2011 Daily Telegraph story. The
newspaper claimed there were more Porsche Cayennes in Greece
than taxpayers declaring incomes of more than €50000. The story exploded
across mainstream news outlets including the BBC. “But it simply wasn’t true. The BBC itself debunked it. Even today
it is still cited by media as fact”, he says.

Casting
a fair light on the crisis

How
about the wider implications of the Eurozone crisis: economic, political and
social? Have these aspects been cast in a fair light by European media? The
Oxford University study suggests that the
crisis has been primarily presented as a financial and economic issue and not as a political issue or one where the
lives of citizens and businesses are being harmed.

“Stories
rarely quote average citizens, business leaders, union leaders, and
spokespersons for civil society organisations. They focus instead on bankers,
economists, and people such as Angela Merkel and François Hollande”, says Professor Picard.

Many
journalists recognise that the social impact of the crisis is not covered sufficiently.
“Markets, banks and company news drive
the daily newswires and not human interest stories”, says McMahon.

Paul Mason
disagrees with Professor Picard as far as
the British broadcast media is concerned. Since 2011 all the main English
language TV news outlets have invested hugely in contacts, fixers and local
producers to enable them to plug into the Greek aspect of the Euro crisis. “Of course when it comes to covering the
Brussels summits and Eurogroups, I would say in general there is closeness
between the specialist journalists stationed there and the bureaucrats/politicians”,
he says.

Towards
better media coverage

Can the
quality of media coverage be improved? Professor
Picard believes that it can only improve if journalists widen how
they perceive the crisis, change some of the practices they use to cover
developments and reconsider the prominence they give to views aired on what is
happening and its impact.

In order to
make reporting more balanced, journalists should have extensive knowledge of
other EU member states and understand their culture and history. They also need
to extend their sources: “You always see
the same group of commentators being quoted in media”, adds Méabh McMahon.

News
consumers need to do their homework too; they need to look at media with much
more scrutiny, stresses Mehran Khalili: “Be
aware that all news reporting has a view, however subtle it may be, and don’t
think that a debate is balanced because other views are present in media
coverage”.

But there
is some cause for optimism. It is remarkable how the crisis has, in fact, increased
the reporting on EU affairs and that there is now a market mechanism pushing up
the quality of EU coverage. For example, Alvise Armellini says “Italian media are creating new journalist
positions in Brussels. They know that they need to cover the issue and they
need to do it well”.

Paul
Mason, who recently published a book on the rapidly evolving
‘information economy’, argues
that digital technology and social networks can contribute to the development
of a more Europeanised public sphere. “There is already a Europe-wide public sphere
in social media,” he asserts.

Mason brings up
the example of the massive traction that the
#ThisIsACoup hashtag gathered on Twitter, as the Eurozone leaders were
negotiating the terms of the third bailout deal for Greece: “The mass of people recognised the theft of
sovereignty that was going on - and they barely needed the mainstream press to
make it happen”.

As far as
traditional media is concerned, the Oxford University study confirms the
emergence of a small European sphere in public consideration of the
crisis-related issues.

Overall,
the coverage portrayed those issues as "broader and more complex than
merely the actions of individual countries." This is a small step in
the right direction for better and more balanced media coverage.

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